This term, transcribed «バックション», was (is still ?) used in Japan to describe a woman who is decidedly more attractive when viewed from the rear than en face. The interesting thing about this loan word is that, not unlike many technical terms in English which are an admixture of Latin and Greek, is that it derives from two distinct European languages - «bakku» from English «back», and «shon» from German «schön». I have never been able to find it listed in a dictionary, but can testify to the fact that it flourished during my stay in Japan in the second half of the 60s of the last century. Perhaps our Flam could help out here - is the term to be found in dictionaries of Japanese slang ? Are any such dictionaries available on the internet ?...

Henri's plight is facilely saved by submitting a query to Google with more Japanese spelling; «バックシャン» or «バックシェーン». The correct etymology, as far as I can verify, has been given by Henri.

I have heard this word two or three times in conversiation with おやじ, middle aged gentlemen. Before the War, German and, to a lesser degree, French had enough currency in Japan to provide loan words. For example, シェーンなメッチェン or sheen-na mecchen (from schön Maedchen) was a distictly collegeate slang for beautiful girls. Gerupin (pennyless) was a chimera word between German Geld (gold, money) and sukampin (素寒貧), an indigenous word for pennyless.

I am sometimes appalled with the differences between Japan that Henri saw and lived in and that I currently find myself in. This thread made me realise that few, if any, linguistic innovations have been tried that involve loan from non-English foreign languages in my generation. Perhaps foreign language majors are, as ever, innovating their speech with the language they study but the new words seldom survive when let out of campus.

Nowadays, schön or シェーン is hardly an item of common vocabulary. With it, bakkusheen is dying out, I though. A quick Google search, however, returned many hits for «バックシャン» in sectors of subculture. 古い言葉が死ななくて、本当に良かった。

This is not related to Henri's question, but I somehow got reminded of the Japanese ability to reduce and combine foreign and native words into something more "palatable" to the Japanese tongue. Examples are パソコン (pasokon) for personal computer, アルバイ (arubai) for アルバイト (arubaito), from German Arbeit - work, 私大 (shidai) for 私立大学 (shiritsudaigaku), private university.

The other day I saw these words: ドアノブ (doanobu) on the doorhandle and thought, oh, okay, that's from doorknob, but that's not a knob, it's a handle, and told my Japanese teacher that, to which she replied, "That's what we call it in Japanese" .

Brazilian dude

Reminds me of パワーウインドー (pawa- uinda-, power window), which is what the Japanese call an electric window in a car, and I'm also told that when the Japanese say フロント (furonto - front), they don't mean the front of a building, they mean the front desk.

Thanks, Flam, for giving my memory, which had distorted the pronunciation of this term a nudge - it is, of course, «バックシャン», and I was glad to see, after checking with Google, that the term (and presumably the phenomenon) has not died out, even among those younger than members of the 親父/親爺/老爺 (おやじ) class, who Flam, with his characteristic delicacy, is kind enough to refer to as «middle-aged» gentlemen. It's also good to see that deference to the aged is not entirely extinct in Japan....

Brazilian dude wrote:アルバイ (arubai) for アルバイト (arubaito), from German Arbeit - work

The word アルバイト, meaning a part-time job or a part-timer, is abbeviated to バイト.

The other day I saw these words: ドアノブ (doanobu) on the doorhandle and thought, oh, okay, that's from doorknob, but that's not a knob, it's a handle, and told my Japanese teacher that, to which she replied, "That's what we call it in Japanese" .

私立大学 (shiritsu-daigaku) and the abbreviated 私大 (shidai) cause phonetic confusion with a homonym pair; 市立大学 and 市大 (shiritsu-daigaku or shidai), meaning city university.

When oral distinction is necessary, a private university is referred to watakushi-ritsu, and a city university ichi-ritsu; each after the kun reading of the first character. MS Japanese IME supports both readings as proper input for 私立 and 市立.

Flaminius wrote: ...The word アルバイト, meaning a part-time job or a part-timer, is abbeviated to バイト...

Interesting, and, I suspect, a new development during the last 30-odd years ; in any event, I can't remember having heard this term for this type of work during my stay in Japan. One problem with this simplification is that it would tend to render the word open to confusion with words derived from the English «bite», but of course, context would usually suffice to distinguish them....

Brazilian dude wrote:I wrote [ドアハンドル] and my computer was eager to convert it to katakana, which seems to be a good incation of something that has been used before.

Methinks the IME was eager because it recognised your input as a combination of door and handle. Handle in Japanese means a round thing that you can turn. Thus the most typical handle is steering wheel of an automobile or a motorbike. I never heard doorhandle in daily context.

バイト can be short for arubaito or a loan meaning byte. The distinction is made by pitch accent which the former does not have on any mora and the latter on the first.

Loan words into Japanese tend to lose accent when they become familiar. Words representing technological innovation quickly lose accent because they spread and die out quickly. Looked at other way round, speakers who utter those techy loans without accent present themselves either as show-offs or as those who are really in the business.